Category: impact

Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution encyclopedia.ushmm.org
The Holocaust is the best documented case of genocide. Despite this, calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is an impossible task. There is no single wartime document that spells out how many people were killed. And in some cases, contrary to popular opinion, records were not kept.

The term “genocide” is one of those controversial terms that can lead to all kinds of problems. The problem is that the term has been so politicized, and frequently used to attack leaders or countries that one dislikes, that it has come to mean different things to different people. For instance, the term has frequently been used to describe what white settlers did to the Native Americans over the last few centuries, when much of the indigenous population of the United States was wiped out. However, the overwhelming majority of those deaths were due to smallpox being inadvertently introduced into a native population that lacked the biological means to resist it which, while devastating, was not a genocide as it was not done intentionally.

For something to qualify as genocide, it has to be a deliberate, calculated decision by a particular ethnic or religious group, leader, or a government to exterminate, or otherwise destroy, a specific group of people for religious, cultural, racial, or political reasons. This can be done either through direct action (murder) or through indirect means (deportation or starvation). Using this general definition, then, what were the most horrific acts of genocide committed throughout history? It will always be something of an exercise in subjectivity to determine which were the worst, as how does one go about measuring such a thing? Is it a matter of sheer number of victims? Duration? Political ramifications? Nevertheless, here is my attempt to list the ten largest, most horrific, or best-known genocides in human history…”

Heinrich Himmler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia“..Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtˌpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] (About this soundlisten); 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the people most directly responsible for the Holocaust. ..

. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). Himmler had a lifelong interest in occultism, interpreting Germanic neopagan and Völkisch beliefs to promote the racial policy of Nazi Germany, and incorporating esoteric symbolism and rituals into the SS. ..

In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk. Nauseated and shaken by the experience,[124] he was concerned about the impact such actions would have on the mental health of his SS men. He decided that alternate methods of killing should be found.[125][126] On his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded, including the addition of gas chambers, where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B.[127] Himmler visited the camp in person on 17 and 18 July 1942. He was given a demonstration of a mass killing using the gas chamber..

The Nazis planned to kill Polish intellectuals and restrict non-Germans in the General Government and conquered territories to a fourth-grade education.[140] The Nazis wanted to breed a master race of racially pure Nordic Aryans in Germany. As an agronomist and farmer Himmler was acquainted with the principles of selective breeding, which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through eugenics, to be Nordic in appearance within several decades of the end of the war.[141]..”

Jewish Persecution

Holocaust speaker to be in Hancock, Morris By news@stevenscountytimes.com on Nov 23, 2018 at 6:29 p.m. stevenscountytimes.com“…After retiring as a professor from the University of Minnesota Minneapolis in 2001, where he was employed for 50 years as a professor of communication and creativity, Fred Amram has spent most of his time in retirement addressing his history as a Holocaust survivor. He’s given lectures to students, military members and government agencies, and published a memoir titled “We’re in America Now: A Survivor’s Stories,” which details his upbringing in Germany and in America.

Amram wrote about witnessing the national wave of violent anti-Jewish attacks known as Kristallnacht and the Gestapo raiding his home; he watched British bombers from his balcony, when Jews were banned from air raid shelters; he saw his father forced into slave labor; and he lost extended family members in the ghettos and concentration camps.

Amram will speak at the Stevens County Historical Society Museum at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 27, and to students at Hancock Schools on Wednesday, Nov. 28, a news release said.

He was 2 when the Nazi Party passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which deprived Jews of their citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having relations with Germans.

Amram and his parents would endure four more years of anti-Semitism, air raids and repeated Gestapo searches before fleeing their home in Hanover in November 1939. They eventually settled in New York City and were granted American citizenship. (It was less than two months ago when Amram regained his German Citizenship.)..” Fred Amram

Portraying Fred Amram

CHGSumn
Published on Feb 27, 2014
Fred Amram was born September 19, 1933 in Hanover Germany, where he experienced the early years of the Holocaust. An only child, he and his parents found their way to Antwerp, Belgium in November 1939 before escaping later that month to New York City. For many years the family had no idea the fate their extended families members had suffered until Fred, learned after doing research at Yad Vashem that his 3 ½ year old cousin, Aaltje, and Aunt Käthe died at Auschwitz on February 19, 1943. After attending the New York State College of Forestry and graduating from Syracuse University, he became a graduate student at the University of Minnesota and ultimately a professor of Speech Communication in the University’s General College. He has published three academic books, and dozens of scholarly articles. He currently writes about his experiences in the Holocaust and as a refugee in his adopted country.

“..“The key thing to understanding [the Holocaust] in Lithuania is the hated occupation by the Soviets as the consequence of the Nazi-Soviet pact,” Rees explains.

“Many in Lithuania believed the lie that the Nazis were peddling at the time, that communism equals Judaism and that Jews were aiding the Soviet authorities,” the historian adds.

If there had not been the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states immediately preceding the Nazi invasion, Rees says the Holocaust in Lithuania might have gone very differently and many Jews could have possibly survived…

“The Nazis knew that if they kept shooting people they would have psychological problems for the killers. So the gas chambers solved this problem,” says Rees…”

Other Groups

“..The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian nationalism.The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span the River Drina and extend to the border of Belgrade.The movement emphasized the need for a racially “pure” Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs, Jews and Romani people, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croatians.

..

The Ustaše were fiercely Catholic, identifying it with Croatian nationalism. They declared that the Catholic and Muslim faiths were the religions of the Croatian people. They claimed the Islam of the Bosniaks was a religion which “keeps true the blood of Croats”.

..

“Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand”

..The history textbooks in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cited 700,000 as the total number of victims at Jasenovac. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), “Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies.”..

In contrast, clergymen such as Archbishop of Mostar Alojzije Mišić and priest Marko Oršolić publicly condemned the Ustaše yet suffered no repression…

At the end of war, Ustaše continued fighting for a short while after the formal surrender of German Army Group E on 9 May 1945, and many refugees attempted to escape to Austria. Pavelić, however, with the help of associates among the Franciscans, managed to escape and hide in Austria and Rome, later fleeing to Argentina..”

World War II Serb Holocaust No Fiction MAY 12, 1994 nytimes.com“..In June 1941, Milan Budak, then Croatian minister of education, is on record as stating that Croatia was to be a state of two religions: Roman Catholicism and Islam. Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of wartime Croatia, and the Bosnian Muslims were encouraged to massacre Serbs; the Bosnian Muslim Handzjar unit of the SS was particularly effective in this regard. According to Budak’s openly stated policy, Serbs should be dealt with in three ways: one-third to be exterminated, one-third deported and the rest converted to Catholicism…”

‘…Just this week, the Serbian parliament apologized for its role in the infamous Srebrenica massacre of 1995 that killed some 7,000 Bosnian Muslims. Such an apology was considered unthinkable even a few years ago, yet the pressures of joining the EU helped nudge that nation to account for this war crime.
..

In 2001, Croatian President Stepjan Mesic apologized to Jews in an address delivered at the Israeli Knesset. In 2003, he joined Serbia’s president in a mutual apology for “all the evils” each side had brought during the Balkan conflict.

..
..”Bosnian Genocide history.com“..In May 1993, the U.N. Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, Netherlands. It was the first international tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46, and the first to prosecute genocide, among other war crimes.
..

..After a trial lasting more than four years and involving the testimony of nearly 600 witnesses, the ICTY found Mladic, who had been dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity in November 2017. The tribunal sentenced the 74-year-old former general to life in prison. Coming on the heels of Karadzic’s conviction for war crimes the previous year, Mladic’s long-delayed conviction marked the last major prosecution by the ICTY.

.”

Blacks

In Germany’s extermination program for black Africans, a template for the Holocaust By Edwin Black 5 May 2016, 12:05 pm 32 25,491 timesofisrael.com
Decades before the Nazis turned to the Jews, German colonialists in Southwest Africa – now Namibia – dehumanized, built death camps for, and slaughtered tens of thousands of tribespeople in a systematic genocide. Here, Edwin Black reveals the full horrors of an eerie and odious precursor of the Shoah, and its legacy in the US“..Beginning in 1884, Germany colonized four territories across the breadth of the continent: Togoland, the Cameroons, Tanganyika, and a main coastal presence in Southwest Africa, now known as Namibia. In Southwest Africa, German settlers were able to establish lucrative plantations by exploiting the labor of local Herero and Nama (also known as Hottentot) indigenous peoples. German banks and industrialists combined to provide needed economic support and investment. Berlin dispatched a small military contingent to protect white settlers as they confronted the lightly armed African natives considered subhuman in Germany’s twisted notion of racial hierarchy…”

Denial

Why Do People Still Deny The Holocaust?

5 Facts That The Holocaust Never Happened

NSTruth1488
Published on Jun 19, 2017

Jews and the African Slave Trade BY MJL myjewishlearning.com
Like many others, Jews participated in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but they by no means dominated it.

“..The participants in the Atlantic slave system included Arabs, Berbers, scores of African ethnic groups, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, Jews, Germans, Swedes, French, English, Danes, white Americans, Native Americans, and even thousands of New World blacks who had been emancipated or were descended from freed slaves but who then became slaveholding farmers or planters themselves.

Davis went on to note that in the American South in 1830 there were “120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves.”…”

HISTORY: Jewish Slavetrade Documentary

Ford’s Anti-Semitism .pbs.org“..Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic views echoed the fears and assumptions of many Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anti-Semitism in America saw a change in expression and virulence when increased immigration from Europe brought millions of Jews to the U.S. during Ford’s childhood in the latter half of the 19th century. It reached its peak during the mid-1920s: a time when Ku Klux Klanmembership had reached four million, Prohibition restricted alcohol consumption, and discriminatory immigration policies were enacted favoring immigrants from northern and western Europe over other parts of the world.

A close friend recalled a camping trip in 1919 during which Ford lectured a group around the campfire. He “attributes all evil to Jews or to the Jewish capitalists,” the friend wrote in his diary. “The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy…”..

What did the Jewish community think about Ford’s paper?
For the Jews who are reading Ford’s rants in The Dearborn Independent, this is very frightening. Jewish publications in English and in Yiddish are reporting on the material that comes out in The Dearborn Independent. They’re really tracking this…

In 1938, Ford received an award from the Nazi regime called the “Grand Cross of the German Eagle.” How do we make sense of this award? What does it mean?
The Germans honor Ford, we could say, for a couple reasons. ..

From the point of view of anti-Semitism, Hitler could look at Ford as somebody who was — let’s call him an age-mate. They were both in the 1920s beginning to write and disseminate information about what they both considered to be this great powerful threat, “the Jew.”..

“..The Nazis idolized many aspects of American society: the cult of sport, Hollywood production values, the mythology of the frontier. From boyhood on, Hitler devoured the Westerns of the popular German novelist Karl May. In 1928, Hitler remarked, approvingly, that white settlers in America had “gunned down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand.” When he spoke of Lebensraum, the German drive for “living space” in Eastern Europe, he often had America in mind…

Ron Rosenbaum, in his 1998 book “Explaining Hitler,” gives a tour of the more outré theories. It has been suggested, variously, that the key to understanding Hitler is the fact that he had an abusive father; that he was too close to his mother; that he had a Jewish grandfather; that he had encephalitis; that he contracted syphilis from a Jewish prostitute; that he blamed a Jewish doctor for his mother’s death; that he was missing a testicle; that he underwent a wayward hypnosis treatment; that he was gay; that he harbored coprophilic fantasies about his niece; that he was addled by drugs; or—a personal favorite—that his anti-Semitism was triggered by briefly attending school with Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Linz. At the root of this speculative mania is what Rosenbaum calls the “lost safe-deposit box” mentality: with sufficient sleuthing, the mystery can be solved in one Sherlockian stroke…

American eugenicists made no secret of their racist objectives, and their views were prevalent enough that F. Scott Fitzgerald featured them in “The Great Gatsby.” (The cloddish Tom Buchanan, having evidently read Lothrop Stoddard’s 1920 tract “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy,” says, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged.”) California’s sterilization program directly inspired the Nazi sterilization law of 1934. There are also sinister, if mostly coincidental, similarities between American and German technologies of death. In 1924, the first execution by gas chamber took place, in Nevada. In a history of the American gas chamber, Scott Christianson states that the fumigating agent Zyklon-B, which was licensed to American Cyanamid by the German company I. G. Farben, was considered as a lethal agent but found to be impractical. Zyklon-B was, however, used to disinfect immigrants as they crossed the border at El Paso—a practice that did not go unnoticed by Gerhard Peters, the chemist who supplied a modified version of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz. Later, American gas chambers were outfitted with a chute down which poison pellets were dropped. Earl Liston, the inventor of the device, explained, “Pulling a lever to kill a man is hard work. Pouring acid down a tube is easier on the nerves, more like watering flowers.” Much the same method was introduced at Auschwitz, to relieve stress on S.S. guards…

When Hitler praised American restrictions on naturalization, he had in mind the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed national quotas and barred most Asian people altogether. For Nazi observers, this was evidence that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality. The Immigration Act, too, played a facilitating role in the Holocaust, because the quotas prevented thousands of Jews, including Anne Frank and her family, from reaching America. In 1938, President Roosevelt called for an international conference on the plight of European refugees; this was held in Évian-les-Bains, France, but no substantive change resulted. The German Foreign Office, in a sardonic reply, found it “astounding” that other countries would decry Germany’s treatment of Jews and then decline to admit them…”

History of the Jews in the Philippines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia“..It was during the era of the Philippine Commonwealth, 1935–1946, that Jewish refugees from Europe sought a safe haven in Manila. The migration of Jews escaping Europe between 1935 and 1941 was the last major immigration of Jews to the Philippines. The first German Jews to arrive in Manila actually came from the Jewish community in Shanghai. With the occupation of Peking by the Japanese in 1937, the four million inhabitants of Shanghai were endangered. Germany’s shift of alliance from China to Japan at this time alarmed German Jews in Shanghai, fearing German pressure on Japan to adopt Nazi anti-Jewish policies. Fearing for them as well, the Jewish Community in Manila, led by the Frieder Brothers of Cincinnati,[8] organized the Jewish Refugee Committee of Manila (JRC) with the intention of rescuing German members of the Shanghai Jewish community.[9] These Jews had already been deprived of their German citizenship, and the Gestapo presence that was taking root in Japanese areas threatened Jewish existence in Shanghai as well. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the JRC received a telegram from Shanghai asking for assistance for Shanghai’s refugee Jews. With the help of Feng-Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul-General in Austria, Austrian Jews were able to escape to other countries, including the Philippines,[10] when Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to Germany in 1938.[1] Manila then received 30 German Jewish refugee families from Shanghai, which then started a larger program that would eventually rescue 1300 refugee Jews from Europe between 1937 and 1941, the largest influx of Jews in Philippine history. ..

While it was important to have the cooperation and consent of President Quezon in this refugee rescue plan,[2][3][8][9] all issues of Philippine foreign affairs was still totally in the hands of the U.S. State Department and would be until the Philippines was granted independence in 1946. What is unique to the rescue of refugee Jews in the Philippines is that the Jewish Community in Manila was granted authority by High Commissioner Paul McNutt and Philippine President Quezon to operate a selection committee to choose those who would be granted visas by the U.S. State Department.[1] By an application and review process, Jewish refugees in Germany and Austria obtained visas for immigration from U.S. consular officers who had been instructed by the U.S. State Department to issue visas based on recommendations from the JRC in Manila. This successful Frieder-McNutt selection rescue plan led to the larger resettlement rescue plan that focused on the island of Mindanao as a destination for the mass resettlement of 10,000 refugee Jews.[11] For the refugees who did manage to settle in the Philippines, the JRC organised committees to aid in finding employment and new homes for them in Manila..”

On-going Ant-Semitism (anti-Semitic )

MMohamed Mohamed, LA Hate Crime Suspect: 5 Fast Facts By Erin Laviola Updated Nov 26, 2018 at 5:33 heavy.com“..Mohamed Mohamed is the 32-year-old suspect accused of trying to run down two Jewish men in Los Angeles with his vehicle. The incident happened on November 23, 2018, as the two worshippers left a synagogue in the neighborhood of Hancock Park. ..

The FBI has also joined the investigation, as officials look into the suspect’s background. Officials said Mohamed was born in Somalia and had been in the Los Angeles area for only a few days prior to the incident.

PennLive.com
Published on Oct 27, 2018
Robert Bowers, 46, of Pittsburgh, the man arrested in the mass shooting Saturday at a Pennsylvania synagogue during a bris, appears to have made virulently anti-Semitic posts on a social media platform popular with far-right extremists, including one made shortly before the attack.
(Video by Janet Pickel, PennLive.com, via Wochit)

Synagogue shooter was obsessed with Jewish refugee agency The Associated Press | Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018, 11:36 a.m. triblive.com“.. Just moments before the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 people dead, the suspect is believed to have posted a final social media rant against a Jewish refugee settlement agency most people had never heard of, but which has increasingly become the target of right-wing rage and conspiracy theories. ..”

Robert Bowers, Pittsburgh Shooting Suspect, Appears in Court By Campbell Robertson Oct. 29, 2018 .nytimes.com “..The Pittsburgh chapter of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a progressive Jewish group focused on social justice in the United States, said in an open letter to Mr. Trump that he was “not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism.”

The letter, which had 26,000 signatures on Monday morning, said Mr. Trump’s language had given confidence to white nationalists.

“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the letter said. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.”..”

For decades, restrictive covenants in home deeds forbade Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. Some country clubs excluded Jews from membership or even playing their courses as guests. Some Ivy League universities set quotas limiting the number of Jewish students they would admit…”

I Can Only Imagine
Published on Jan 9, 2018
I Can Only Imagine: Official Trailer
In Theaters March 16http://icanonlyimagine.com”
It’s the song that brings ultimate hope to so many … often in the midst of life’s most challenging moments. Amazingly, the song was written in mere minutes by MercyMe lead singer Bart Millard. In reality, those lyrics took a lifetime to craft. “

Stop calling Christian movies’ success a ‘surprise’ Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY Published 12:34 p.m. ET March 27, 2018 | Updated 5:25 p.m. ET March 29, 2018 usatoday.com“..That’s not to say every religious movie is a success right out of the gate. Paul, Apostle of Christ starring The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel made back its $5-million budget this past weekend, although it still trails the openings of other Biblical epics such as Son of God ($25.6 million) and Risen ($11.8 million). ..

1. Look to pre-existing source material.

Some of the biggest Christian hits of the past few years have been based on best-selling books, including last year’s The Shack ($57.4 million total) and 2016’s Miracles From Heaven ($61.7 million), while 2014’s Son of God ($59.7 million total) was adapted from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’s hit miniseries The Bible. ..

2. Offer a fresh take on the Bible.

While more straightforward tellings of Jesus’ life like 2006’s The Nativity Story ($37.6 million total) have flourished, it helps to see the story through fresh eyes. Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ ($370.8 million) offered a gritty, violent take on the Messiah’s Crucifixion, and 2016’s Risen ($36.9 million) charted a Roman soldier’s search for Jesus’ body after the Resurrection. ,,

3. Don’t shy away from God.

Three of the five highest-grossing faith-based movies are The Chronicles of Narnia series,released in the mid-2000s. All are based on Christian author C.S. Lewis’ young-adult novels and made $100 million-plus at the U.S. box office. The franchise wore religious symbolism on its sleeve, whereas A Wrinkle in Time more recently skimped on its source material’s Christian messaging, which some people believe may have put a dent in its earnings ($74.1 million so far).

A Wrinkle in Time Trailer #1 (2018) | Movieclips Trailers

“(Author) Madeleine L’Engle had a lot of scripture and ideas that drew from the Bible, and a lot of those things really got ironed out (of the film),” Holz says. “The producers said they wanted to make the movie really inclusive, but I think when you (adapt) a book that has some Christian ideas and take those out, that’s a potential turnoff to your core audience.”..
..”

Author Madeleine L’Engle, who died in 2007 at age 88, spoke about the importance of her own Christian faith as it relates to “A Wrinkle in Time.”

“If I’ve ever written a book that says what I feel about God and the universe, this is it,” L’Engle reportedly wrote in her journal. “This is my psalm of praise to life, my stand for life against death.” ..”A Wrinkle in Time (2018 film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org“.Budget $100–130 million[2][3][4]
Box office $132.4 million[5]..”

Paul, Apostle of Christ: Official Trailer | Now Playing – YouTube

Top 13 highest grossing faith films Movies
May 10th, 2017 foxnews.com“..Here’s a look at the top 13 highest grossing faith-based films from highest to lowest.
1. ‘The Passion of the Christ:’ $611,899,420..”

At around 2 a.m. in northern Atlanta, Ashley Smith had just returned to her apartment after making a late night run to a convenience store. It was then that she noticed a suspicious looking man sitting in his car.

She felt uneasy, so she jumped out of her car and hurried to her apartment.. She put the keys in the lock, opened the door, and the stranger was right behind her.

“I started to scream at the top of my lungs and he came up to me (saying) ‘Shut up, shut up!’ He just pointed the gun at me. ‘Just shut up. If you don’t scream I won’t hurt you.’ So, I stopped screaming. And he pushed me in the house, and shut the door and locked it. And I knew I wasn’t going to make it out of there. I knew I was going to die. But I immediately said, “’God, look, he can rape me. He can do whatever he wants to me. Just let me walk out of here alive.’”

Inside, he told Ashley he was Brian Nichols, the man police had been looking for…”

Captive Movie – Official Trailer – YouTube

Captive Movie
Published on Jun 16, 2015
Based on an inspiring true story, WATCH the official CAPTIVE movie trailer starring Kate Mara and David Oyelowo. http://www.captivethemovie.com/

The rising influence of faith-based movie fans By Allison Stewart September 18, 2015 washingtonpost.com“..Mara is Oyelowo’s co-star in the new film “Captive,” the true-life story of escaped murderer Brian Nichols and his hostage, Ashley Smith, who persuades him to release her using the power of faith and a dog-eared copy of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life.”..

“There’s certain groups of people that only watch Christian movies,” says David A.R. White, who produced and co-starred in “God’s Not Dead” and co-founded the Christian production company Pure Flix. “They don’t have cable, they don’t watch mainstream TV, they just watch Christian content. We had so many write in that they went to ‘God’s Not Dead,’ and it was their first movie in eight to 10 years in a movie theater. That opened the door to, like, ‘Oh, wow, maybe the movies aren’t a sinful place.’ When ‘Heaven’ came out, they started going more consistently.

…Movies such as “The Blind Side,” “Unbroken” and “Selma,” so-called faith-friendly movies that subtly interject Christian principles into inspirational mainstream stories, may be the best hope of bridging the gulf between secular and faith-based audiences. They’re difficult to do well, says Rich Peluso, senior vice president of Affirm Films, the faith-based Sony subsidiary that released “War Room.” “Too many times, producers or filmmakers are thinking you can just tap into the faith-based market. They think of them as one giant group, and if you can just stick a priest in a scene, it’s going to connect with those folks, but the community is very diverse.”..
””

During this same span of time, Christian movies saw an explosion of interest as studios realized that a large portion of their audience wasn’t being satisfied with the latest Oscar winners and science fiction blockbusters. The Christian film industry was also helped by the growth of independent filmmaking over the last 20-30 years. Even though Hollywood has grown a little fonder of Christian stories, that doesn’t mean faith-based films are completely at the mercy of an industry that mostly doesn’t understand Christians. We can become our own storytellers and work around the system.

Christian films have seen an increase in production mostly because a number of them have found box office success. This success is defined not just by overall dollars earned but return on investment. If you make a film for $10 million and it earns $12 million in theaters, that’s not exactly a great success. Production budgets often don’t include the costs of marketing or details on distribution rights, so a safe formula for financial success is generally that a movie must make double its listed production budget. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Christian movies which had the biggest box office success..

Chronicles of Narnia

“The Chronicles of Narnia” is one of, if not the biggest Christian entertainment franchise in existence. C.S. Lewis’ magnificent world has been brought to the screen three times. First, there was “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which earned around $750 million on a budget of $180 million. Next, we had “Prince Caspian” in 2008. This is the only film featured on this list that doesn’t match up to the “double the production budget” rule. The film did earn $420 million, but it had a really steep budget at $225 million. The Narnia series picked things back up with “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” two years later. That film made roughly the same amount of money as its predecessor, but it cost $60 million less to make. The Narnia films each have a huge budget for Christian movies, but they tend to make their money back.”

RISEN Official Final Trailer (2016) Joseph Fiennes, Tom … – YouTube

Follows the epic Biblical story of the Resurrection, as told through the eyes of a non-believer. Clavius, a powerful Roman Military Tribune, and his aide Lucius, are tasked with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in the weeks following the crucifixion, in order to disprove the rumors of a risen Messiah and prevent an uprising in Jerusalem. Director: Kevin Reynolds Stars: Tom Felton, Joseph Fiennes, Cliff Curtis In theaters: February 9, 2016

Jennifer Garner finds faith, again, in ‘Miracles From Heaven’ Elysa Gardner, @elysagardner, USA TODAY Published 8:04 a.m. ET March 14, 2016 | Updated 5:59 p.m. ET March 14, 2016 usatoday.com“..But “I think I had become complacent in raising my children, almost as though (I thought) they were going to receive the ground beneath their feet that heaven had given me through osmosis,” she says. Returning home after filming, Garner raised the subject with her kids, “and they said, ‘Well, we want to go to church.’ ”

Garner “was floored, and I immediately looked up the local United Methodist church. We went there next Sunday, and it turned out to be the perfect environment. We’ve gotten so much from it; it’s like a gift Christy gave me.”..”

Miracles from Heaven (2016) historyvshollywood.com
Starring Jennifer Garner, Martin Henderson, Queen Latifah, Kylie Rogers | based on the memoir ‘Miracles from Heaven’ by Christy Beam“..The Miracles from Heaven true story reveals that when Annabel Beam was five years old she was diagnosed with two rare life-threatening digestive disorders, pseudo-obstruction motility disorder and antral hypomotility disorder, which resulted in frequent hospital stays (FoxNews.com). The former is characterized by altered and inefficient contractions (peristalsis) of the muscles in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, which help to move food content along. Instead of food content being passed efficiently, the intestines react as if there is a blockage, leading to inefficient absorption of nutrients. The latter, antral hypomotility disorder, is characterized by weak contractions in the antrum part of the stomach…”

October Baby klovefanawards.com“..“October Baby” was a modest success that took home over $5 million in ticket sales on a budget about one-fifth that amount. Released in 2011, the film is about a young woman who discovers that she was adopted by her parents after her birth mother tried to abort her. It’s a very emotional film as you can imagine. Adding a personal story to such a hot button issue is the kind of thing that Hollywood often does with themes like immigration, health care, and war…”

October Baby: Official Movie Trailer – YouTube

The Problem with ‘October Baby,’ A Christian Film About Abortion Morgan Feddes| March 21, 2012 christianitytoday.com
No one wanted the film. Except audiences, apparently.“..October Baby is a fairly typical coming-of-age love story, but the plot hinges on the main character’s discovery that she’s an abortion survivor. (Jon Erwin wrote it after hearing abortion survivor Gianna Jessen speak.) Though studio executives loved the film, they didn’t want to take on the controversial topic.

But the Erwins managed to raise enough support to do a limited release last October, and on its opening weekend it was the fourth-highest grossing film for per-screen average at almost $8,000 per theater. The positive reaction was enough to convince Provident Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films to help bring the movie to a wider audience—about 350 theaters when it releases on Friday, March 23…”

In North Dakota’s Bakken oil boom, there will be blood By Jennifer Gollan / June 13, 2015 revealnews.org“…Brendan Wegner, 21, had been scrambling down a derrick ladder when the well exploded, consuming him in a fiery tornado of oil and petroleum vapors. Rescuers found his body pinned under a heap of twisted steel pipes melted by the inferno. His charred hands were recovered later, still gripping the derrick ladder. It was his first day on the rig.

Hardy died the next day of his burns. Twinn had his lower legs amputated. Dogged by post-traumatic stress disorder, he killed himself in October 2013. Each left behind three children. Hysjulien suffered debilitating third-degree burns over half of his body. He is the lone survivor.

To this day, the explosion – pieced together from interviews, court documents and federal and local reports – remains the worst accident in the expansive Bakken oil fields since the boom began in 2006…”

Saltwater Spill in Bear Den Bay
July 11, 2014
By Ali Guio mss-lawfirm.com“..Over the Fourth of July weekend, a pipe carrying saltwater (also called “brine”) separated near North Dakota’s badlands and spilled an estimated one million gallons of the oil and gas production byproduct. Brine is ten to thirty times saltier than seawater. The saltwater spill extended nearly two miles down a steep ravine and left a swath of dead vegetation in its path. The polluted ravine flows into Bear Den Bay, which is a tributary to man-made Lake Sakakawea. Lake Sakakawea provides drinking water to the nearby Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The natural resources administrator for the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes expressed concern that because the spill occurred at the top of a craggy bluff, the terrain would hinder efforts preserve the Reservation’s drinking water supply. An investigation Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that the saltwater reached Bear Den Bay, but that most of the spill was pooled into the ground or held behind beaver dams. The pipeline in question was not equipped with a monitor that would have alerted the company to the spill before this large amount of brine had escaped. The spill was discovered when the company noticed a discrepancy in production loss reports and investigated. ..”

Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s Energy Program, joins Thom. Residents of North Dakota are dealing with a toxic spill of brine – an oil and gas production byproduct – while more news is coming out about a massive oil spill in the Yellowstone River. How much damage are these spills doing to our environment – and why aren’t we moving beyond fossil fuels?
..”Persistent Water and Soil Contamination Found at N.D. Wastewater Spills
By Zahra Hirji
May 5, 2016 dailyyonder.com“..The results “indicate that the water contamination from brine spills is remarkably persistent in the environment,” Duke scientists wrote in their study published last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The contamination included high levels of selenium, known to be toxic to fish and wildlife, and radioactive radium…

More than 4,000 spills have occurred in North Dakota since 2001, state records show. While many of these spills involve small amounts of wastewater, an investigation by Inside Energy last year showed these spills are increasing in size and frequency. In a move to curb these spills, state regulators are drafting new stricter construction and monitoring requirements for wastewater pipelines…

Two of the largest spills were the subject of the recent study. The biggest was discovered in January 2015 when a pipeline sprung a leak in the northwestern corner of the state near the town of Williston. Approximately 3 million gallons of wastewater was released, contaminating at least two waterways, including Blacktail Creek. (This same pipeline leaked againearlier this year close to the previous spill site.) In July 2014, about a million gallons of wastewater spilled out of a different pipeline in western North Dakota. Called the Bear Den Bay spill, it occurred in the Fort Berthold Reservation and impacted a tributary of Lake Sakakawea..”

Some water samples had metal concentrations exceeding federal environmental and drinking water regulations. Selenium levels at most spill sites were 35 times higher than those recommended for freshwater aquatic life. And the radium levels observed were 10 to 100 times higher than the levels found at non-spill sites, with the potential to linger in the soil for centuries…”
*see Environment: Clean Water Rights? goodnewseverybodycom.wordpress.com

A 2011 article in the journal, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, examined the potential health impacts of oil and gas drilling in relation to the chemicals used during drilling, fracking, processing,and delivery of natural gas. The paper compiled a list of 632 chemicals (an incomplete list due to trade secrecy exemptions) identified from drilling operations throughout the U.S. Their research found that 75% of the chemicals could affect the skin, eyes,and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40–50% could affect the brain/nervous system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations.

Health impacts from fracking are only now being examined by health experts, since such large-scale drilling is a recent phenomenon. Exposure to toxic chemicals even at low levels can cause tremendous harm to humans; the endocrine system is sensitive to chemical exposures measuring in parts-per-billions, or less. Nevertheless, many of the health risks from the toxins used during the fracking process do not express themselves immediately, and require studies looking into long-term health effects.

Despite the complexities of the on-site mixtures of chemicals and their specific contributions to health and environmental problems involved in fracking–conventional drilling practices are more old school and do have known health consequences. Researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, analyzed existing research of exposure to conventional petroleum hydrocarbons in occupational settings, and residences near refineries, in conjunction with known pollutants associated with fracking (nonconventional), in order to assess health risks to those residents living near fracking operations. Their basic conclusions were: the closer you live to drilling operations, the greater your health risk. Sounds obvious, but if you were to sue an oil company for the suspected killing a loved one via cancer, you would need a little more legal ammunition than “it just makes common sense” against an army of corporate lawyers.
..”In North Dakota and Nationwide, A Boom in Health Problems Accompanies Fracking By Nicholas Kusnetz May 21, 2012 archive.onearth.org“..Although a handful of North Dakota residents have complained about odors or health effects from drilling near their homes, the Schilkes are the first in the region to report such widespread and sustained health problems. But while their symptoms may be new to North Dakota, they mirror those reported in recent years in gas fields from the Rockies to the Appalachians. Residents of several states have experienced a suite of symptoms — including rashes, congestion, dizziness, nausea, and even cancer — that they say began when drilling and fracking came to their neighborhoods…”

Huge vacuums were being used to suck up the spilled waste from the pastureland and then crews were forced to dig around 18 inches into the ground to remove the contaminated layer of pastureland
..”Oil Pipeline Shut Down After Spill, Just 200 Miles From Standing Rock Energy| Dec. 06, 2016 06:05PM EST Dan Zukowski ecowatch.com“..A six-inch crude oil pipeline operated by Belle Fourche Pipeline Company in western North Dakota was shut down following discovery of a leak on Monday. The amount of the spill was not immediately known, but oil has leaked into the Ash Coulee Creek in Billings County.

The site of the spill is about 200 miles from the camp where members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their supporters have been protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
..”

North Dakota oil spill 3 times larger than first estimated
BLAKE NICHOLSON,Associated Press 5 hours ago (Friday, March 24th 2017) yahoo.com“BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A December oil pipeline spill in western North Dakota might have been three times larger than first estimated and among the biggest in state history, a state environmental expert said Friday.

About 530,000 gallons of oil is now believed to have spilled from the Belle Fourche Pipeline that was likely ruptured by a slumping hillside about 16 miles northwest of Belfield in Billings County, Health Department environmental scientist Bill Seuss said. The earlier estimate was about 176,000 gallons.

No decision has been made on any fines against Wyoming-based True Cos., which operates the pipeline. The company says it is committed to cleaning up the spill and that the job is about 80 percent done.

“There’s no timeline for completion, spokeswoman Wendy Owen said. “We will be there until it is” done.

A company’s efforts to clean up after an oil spill are a large factor in how much of a fine is levied, according to Seuss.

“We tend to hold off on those. It’s kind of a motivator,” he said.

The largest oil pipeline spill in North Dakota was 840,000 gallons, in a wheat field near Tioga in September 2013.

In the December spill, an unknown amount of oil flowed into Ash Coulee Creek, which feeds into the Little Missouri River, a tributary of the Missouri River. Seuss said no oil made it into those rivers or into any drinking water source, but that the focus is on cleaning up the creek before spring grazing season, since cattle drink from the waterway.

There have been no confirmed cases of livestock or wildlife deaths related to the spill. One rancher reported some cattle deaths but refused to allow the state veterinarian to do a necropsy, according to Seuss. Cleanup crews also found a dead beaver, but it’s not known what caused the death.

The pipeline had been leaking since being restarted Dec. 1 following routine maintenance, Seuss said. A landowner discovered the spill on Dec. 5.

There is still oil seeping out of the hillside but it’s being contained. Soil remediation work could take “a year or more,” Seuss said.”

May 21, 2012 archive.onearth.org“..Schilke lost 25 pounds in the summer of 2009 and started having trouble breathing. She had constant diarrhea and would get lightheaded. Her husband Steve’s asthma worsened, frequently leaving him tired and short of breath. The couple began getting unusual muscle aches. The following winter, Jacki got another rash, a quarter-sized spot on her leg that wouldn’t go away. She visited a neurologist who couldn’t explain what was happening. She noticed an ammonia-like smell in the house and started looking for a source, thinking that might be what was making them sick. “Hell, I hauled shit out of here by truckloads,” Jacki says. “I threw everything away. There wasn’t even a bottle of cleaner left in this house.”..”News Releases – North Dakota Department of Health health.nd.gov”
..
Truck Accident Causes Produced Water Spill in Dunn County (12/5/2016)
The North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) has been notified of a produced water spill resulting from a truck accident in Dunn County. Produced water is a by-product of oil and gas development. The spill occurred Friday, Dec. 2, approximately 6 miles north of Killdeer and was reported by Creek Energy Services on Saturday, Dec. 3.

Oil Spill in Billings County (12/5/2016)
The North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) was notified today of an oil spill resulting from a pipeline leak. The location is in Billings County approximately 16 miles northwest of Belfield. The 6-inch in diameter pipeline is operated by Belle Fourche Pipeline.

Source Water Spill Reported in Bowman County (12/2/2016)
The North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) has been notified that a 2,000-barrel source water spill occurred approximately 12 miles southwest of Rhame in Bowman County. Source water is used for enhanced oil recovery and is higher in dissolved solids and minerals than fresh water, but does not carry the same environmental implications as produced water. The well is owned by Denbury Onshore.
..”Environmental Incident Reports ndhealth.govSpill Tracker, May 20, 2015 The Editors nrdc.org
An explosion in North American fossil fuel extraction has led to a dangerous rise in pipeline spills and oil train derailments.Company: Equipment didn’t detect North Dakota oil leak Associated Press Associated Press By JAMES MacPHERSON, Associated Press msn.com 2 hrs ago (Monday, December 12th 2016)“..BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Electronic monitoring equipment failed to detect a pipeline rupture that spewed more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek, the pipeline’s operator said Monday.

A landowner discovered the spill near Belfield on Dec. 5, according to Bill Suess, an environmental scientist with the North Dakota Health Department.

Suess said the spill migrated about almost 6 miles from the spill site along Ash Coulee Creek, and it fouled an unknown amount of private and U.S. Forest Service land along the waterway. The creek feeds into the Little Missouri River, but Seuss said it appears no oil got that far and that no drinking water sources were threatened. The creek was free-flowing when the spill occurred but has since frozen over…”

Lawmakers Move to Regulate Pipelines, After a Record Spill in a Drilling Boom
By Zahra Hirji, InsideClimate News Mar 11, 2015
North Dakota has 20,000 miles of largely unregulated ‘gathering lines,’ and that number is expected to increase by around 60% over the next five years.“..In North Dakota, the number of drilling-related spills occurring annually has steadily increased in recent years, according to an analysis by Inside Energy, a news site. In 2010, there were about 1,000 spills reported. In 2013, there were around twice as many reported.

Since the start of the year, there have been six large spills in North Dakota: five dumped at least 450 gallons of fracking byproduct, and one spilled nearly 500 gallons of oil, according to the state’s online spill databases.

Among those accidents was the largest wastewater spill in North Dakota since the fracking boom kicked off in the early 2000s. On Jan. 6, the spill near Williston was discovered by an employee of the pipeline’s operator, Meadowlark Midstream Company, LLC. Some 2.2 million gallons gushed through a hole 2 inches in diameter­­­––the width of two quarters side-by-side.

Water sampling shows the spill affected at least two local waterways in the Missouri River watershed—Blacktail Creek and Little Muddy River—as well as groundwater around the rupture site. Officials say the spill doesn’t pose a health threat—and that no water wells have been impacted. The pipeline in question measures 4 inches in diameter and is made of a composite material called Fiberspar.

The pipe was immediately shut off after the leak was discovered. The ruptured section of the pipe has been replaced but the line remains shut off. The cause of the spill is still being investigated. According to local news organization Inforum, the pipeline was outfitted with equipment to allow remote monitoring, but the company wasn’t using the technology. Instead, workers checked for leaks using handheld devices.

The wastewater comes from deep underground. When a well is first tapped, flowback, a mix of the slurry cocktail used to blast open the rock and minimal amounts of produced water, comes back up. Once oil and gas start to flow out, produced water continues to gush up for months.
..”

After the vote, the council’s attorney said it will ask a district court judge for a summary judgment to end the lawsuit filed by the Dakota Resource Council and the North Dakota Energy Industry Waste Coalition. The suit challenges any actions stemming from the original, illegal meeting.

Assistant attorney Jeff Erickson said the request for a summary judgment would be based on the fact that, by replaying and ratifying the entire agenda from last August, “everything that would have happened has happened.”

December 18 at 11:16 AM “..North Dakota regulators initially thought just 750 barrels of oil was involved in the spill, but later updated the amount exponentially. They also expanded the affected acreage from about 7 — the size of seven football fields — to about 13 acres, Suess said. The cleanup has cost Tesoro more than $49 million to date and is expected to top $60 million, according to recent filings to the state…”